Hashtag Happy Ending

Puss in Ugg Boots #UpdateAFairyTale

Puss in Ugg Boots #UpdateAFairyTale

At the beginning of March Madness, Bob wrote about Cinderella stories in the sports world. But for this Carolina girl, the college basketball season had a less-than-happy ending.

For those of you who missed the most exciting, nail-biting national championship game in history, UNC’s Prince Charming, Marcus Paige, made a 3-pointer with 4.7 seconds left in the game, tying Carolina and Villanova 74-74. But Villanova then scored its own 3-pointer right before the clock ran out, winning the title of 2016 NCAA Champions.

If only I could re-write history, I would have had Carolina stealing the ball from Villanova on the inbound and slam-dunking it for the win. Alas, I can’t revise the outcome. But did you know that lots of people have been updating fairy tales these days?

Since I’ve been talking to you about things like photobombing and face swapping, I thought I’d share about hashtags. I think we’ve all heard of hashtags by now…

A hashtag (#) is a type of label or metadata tag used on Twitter and other social media services, making it easier for users to find messages with a specific theme or content. For example, search #NCAA2016, and you’ll find each message that was tagged with that hashtag. It’s a quick, easy way to follow a global conversation or to get a feel for what people are saying about trending topics.

Sometimes, hashtags lead to some pretty humorous threads. One Twitter user, who goes by the handle @midnight, challenged people on Twitter to update a fairy tale using the hashtag #UpdateAFairyTale and it trended with some pretty comical results like:

• Kanye, Kanye, let down your big ego. #UpdateAFairyTale
• The little search engine that could. #UpdateAFairyTale and

#updateafairytale

Meanwhile, search the trendy hashtag #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly and you’ll find some pretty offbeat and clever plot synopses told in 140 characters or less:

 

Beauty and the Beast: Stockholm Syndrome works. #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly
Shrek: A guy learns to love a girl without her Instagram filters. #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly and

#updateafairytale

With all due respect to Villanova (who admittedly played a great game), my fairy tale hashtag would look something like this:

Mirror, mirror on the wall, UNC is still the best team of them all. #UpdateAFairyTale

Happy Monday,
~Mary